


Scars

by CureIcy



Category: The Magnus Archives (Podcast)
Genre: (yeah martin's mom is a horrible person), Angst with a Happy Ending, Cantonese Melanie King, Consensual hand holding, Dissociation, M/M, Mild Self Harm, Passive Suicidal Ideation, Racism, Sexism, Trans Martin Blackwood, acknowledging and working through trauma, body image issues, content warnings for:, mentioned child abuse, mentioned transphobia
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-26
Updated: 2020-08-26
Packaged: 2021-03-06 20:20:12
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,132
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26114812
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/CureIcy/pseuds/CureIcy
Summary: An exploration of Melanie, Martin, Jon, and their scars.
Relationships: Martin Blackwood/Jonathan "Jon" Sims | The Archivist, Minor or Background Relationship(s)
Comments: 27
Kudos: 86





	Scars

**Author's Note:**

> Please mind the tags.  
> Also! cantonese melanie was inspired by this wonderful art: https://antidotefortheawkward-art.tumblr.com/post/626110603044536320/consider-this-melanies-king-is-an-older

Melanie was always an angry kid. Everyone acted like she was born with it, but she was born _into_ it, raised in it, soaked in it until she didn’t know how to react except with rage. Teachers said she was far too wild, too stupid to be a good student, boys said she was useless if she wasn’t smart or submissive, girls looked at her features with a mixture of curiosity and disgust and asked what she _was_ , as if she wasn’t human too; people corrected her on her own goddamn name when she tried to pronounce it the original way instead of the watered-down romanization.

Melanie King. Melanie Ging. Melanie 京. She’s written her name over and over, but it never really fits, no matter which way she twists it. It never really fits in anywhere, just like her. She’s a Cantonese lesbian at a British school where everyone wants to pretend that the status quo is golden and perfect and immutable, while she wants to smash that status quo to the ground along with this corrupt institution.

And so she makes it abundantly clear that she doesn’t take shit from anyone, and she’ll back up her words with her fists if she has too. That’s when the whispers start, calling her a freak and deranged, and she is angrier than ever. How _dare_ they reduce her to some kind of inconvenience, how _dare_ they act like the victims when they were the ones who filled her with all this hate. 

(And how dare this violent nature not be enough, never satisfy that empty, gaping, craving for love and acceptance.)

The closest she comes to catharsis is discovering Mitski; something about the combination of longing and anger and repression and the knowledge that she will never belong hits her heart and sticks there. She never listens to anything else, because so what if it’s cliche? So what if every other sapphic in the world is listening to Mitski and thinking about how they’ll never belong? Doesn’t she deserve to keep this little scrap of happiness without feeling ashamed for it?

She is too political for the GSA, too angry for everyone else, and so she’s alone and wants to fight homophobia and racism and sexism and colonialism all at once, and she’s never found a single person who will listen to her about more than one issue. She refuses to hide, though. And if the world hates her for what she is, she’s going to hate it back.

Melanie is a wild kid, and a reckless one. Her parents never know what to do with her, and she’s angry with them too, angry that they can give their little sighs and their disappointed glances but never look her in the eye. In a fit of impulse, she packs a bag and stays the night in a haunted house, hoping that they’ll tell her what she did was wrong, hoping something will finally make sense.

And then she hears the impossible whispers of someone who died long ago, and suddenly she’s got a passion worth living for.

Melanie 京 throws herself into the idea of ghost hunting, into forums and text chats and research, and for the first time feels like she’s getting somewhere. Like she's doing something important, by searching for the people who died and helping to tell their stories. Making sure they aren't forgotten. She has to fight tooth and nail, but finally she makes it to the top. She gets a tv show of her own, and fights the network until they finally give up on trying to make her into some sort of glamour star by hiding her scars. She earned every one of them, damnit, and she’s not going to cover them up just to pretend to be sexy. She’s here to be a ghost hunter, not eye candy. Eventually, one of her assistants reaches a compromise with the network on her behalf, that Melanie plays up the grizzled badass persona and wears tank tops to show off her well-muscled arms.

It’s supposed to draw in an alternative crowd (read: lesbians), but privately she checks twitter and finds that she fills a niche in horror shows that was recently vacated. Apparently, there’s only room for one queer woman on air, as a token offering. Melanie is so disgusted with the industry that she takes a break from watching TV and just checks out a few podcasts instead.

She has to stop listening to the first few, because the British accents just fill her with such anger that she knows it’s not helping. And then she stumbles on What The Ghost, a podcast filled with mediocre sound effects, too many reluctant ads, and awful puns. The narrator is a woman named Georgie Barker, and has a Scouse accent that sometimes pokes through, and Melanie remembers that she’s very, very gay every time she listens.

And then, because the industries overlap, they meet a few times, and Melanie has to try and gather up the courage to ask her out for Hungarian food. She never manages, and it’s forgotten for a while. Then she finds out that Sarah Baldwin is definitely not human, and for a while her life is turned upside down in a mess of frantic digging through history, getting shot by a ghost, and attempting to murder her evil, voyeuristic employer who delights in traumatizing everyone who stands up to him.

There is one bright side, though. Jonathan Sims, her maybe-human boss who died and got better, says his ex is Georgie Barker. When pressed, he gives Melanie her number, and she decides hey, you only live once, at least for most people.

Georgie makes a “bi the way” pun with the cutest finger guns, and Melanie is officially in love. But she also knows that her anger is poisonous, and despite Georgie’s gentle encouragement to go to therapy, she can’t. Not yet, not now, not when she needs to hold onto her current way of life to survive. It’s sad, but she has to dance with this amazingly wonderful woman held at arm’s length.

It was Mitski who brought her out of it, really. An old twitter post that Melanie stumbled upon by accident, about how self destruction was just playing into the hands of the oppressors. About how the most radical thing for a woman shunned by society to do was to love herself. She’s pretty sure she repressed that memory, until she woke up one day lying on the carpet with her leg sliced open and panic swelling to fill the space where her familiar anger used to be.

_If no one else will do it, love and cherish yourself._

So she does. She starts, she makes the choice to recover, she says everything she needs to say to Jon. About how she’s pissed that he broke her trust with impromptu fucking _surgery_ , about how she hates that she misses that bullet, and how confused and messed up she is because of it, anger fading into a toxic mist with no one to blame it on. Communication is... good, right? It doesn’t feel like closure, it _never_ feels like closure, but she’s starting something and she’s going to finish it, damnit.

Because all she wants is to be happy, to love herself, and she’s going to do that in spite of everything. She’s going to stand tall like a middle finger flipping off this world that wants her to be a broken punching bag, and she’s going to heal and unlearn every word of pain until she can smile and mean it. She’s going to go to therapy and learn to treat Georgie right, how she deserves.

But before she can start to heal, she has one last act of self destruction. Her hands are shaking, and without the anger to dull the pain, she’s fully aware and terrified of losing this. But she can’t do this anymore. It’s time she set some boundaries and got away from this awful place.

“Well,” Melanie 京 whispers, “I guess I can join Georgie’s podcast? I don’t need my eyes for that.”

And she adds one last angry scar to her collection.

* * *

Martin doesn’t have scars like the other archival assistants, not really. Sure, he’s got a few in his legs and torso from the worms, but they don’t cover his face and arms like they do for Jon and Tim.

He’s got a couple cigarette burns, but those are from when he’d misbehave as a child, so they don’t really count. And his mother was always careful not to extinguish her cigarettes anywhere that other people might see and ask questions, so it’s not like anyone really knows. They’re healed now, and he’s a bit too self conscious about the scars from his top surgery to show anyone.

The top surgery scars, at least, are pleasant-ish. Sure, he nearly got disowned, but it felt like a huge relief. No more scurrying to the bathroom to take off his binder and breathe for a few minutes, no more overheating in summer with too many concealing layers, no more paranoia that someone would notice his chest, no more fumbling with his binder during panic attacks. The Magnus Institute has surprisingly inclusive healthcare for someplace with such a homophobic boss as Elias, and he barely paid anything out of pocket.

And the acne scars are— well, complicated. He finds himself too often picking at his skin, especially when he’s anxious, even though he knows it’s bad and he knows his skin is a mess. He’s left with pockmarks that scream _diseased, disgusting, ugly,_ and his only consolation is that the freckles he’s never really cared for serve as good camouflage. 

Every summer he ignores the voice in the back of his head telling him to put on sunscreen, despite the family history of skin cancer. It doesn’t really matter, does it? The smattering of freckles that grow more prominent across his nose and cheeks are enough that he relaxes, slightly.

Not that he looks in the mirror much— it’s a Russian roulette of lingering dysphoria, urge to pick at his face, and disgust at the permanent damage he’s already done. And that gets worse once he starts to align himself with the Lonely, when he can’t look at the human form without feeling sick to his stomach in a way that itches for him to get away.

So for a while, it doesn’t matter. And he thinks he might eventually be able to drift free from this body that tells the story of his cowardice and his self destruction and his rebellion and his aching, aching desire to be accepted. If he can get away from it, it won’t hurt so much. Martin is so, so tired of being hurt. He wants to go to sleep and never wake up, just leave this world where no one will miss him.

Except when Jon comes back, Martin is filled with painful, confusing feelings he no longer recognizes. And when Jon cares, cares enough to walk into the abyss and pull him home to a little place in Scotland where he is beloved, it fills him with an ache that sets every scar alight. But he thinks maybe, maybe if he can tell all their stories, he can be set free from his past, at least a little.

So on the train, sitting comfortably with a few bags and Jon swaying slightly to the rumbling of the tracks, Martin finally touches Jon’s shoulder. It’s strange, that he can still feel the warmth of another through all those layers of clothing that Jon has put on to hide his slight frame and keep from shivering.

It makes Martin want to hold him, to keep him safe and warm and comfortable, to feel the steady rise and fall of his chest, to just breathe and feel okay.

“Yes?” Jon says.

“Um, I wanted to tell you something. Something a bit personal, and I hope you don’t already— well, Know it, since it’s not something I like to share but I figured you deserved it.

“I wanted to tell you… I’m transgender.”

“Oh.” Jon blinks a few times. “Are you— I mean, what pronouns?”

“He/him. I’ve been presenting the way I want for a good while, now.”

“I’ll do some research, then,” Jon says, nodding encouragingly. It’s slower than his usual brisk manner, more thoughtful. “The old fashioned way. The Beholding… well, it’s informed me of the negative aspects of transgender experiences only.”

“You aren’t bothered by this? I mean, I know you, um… if you and I are going to, you know, will what’s down there change your answer?”

“I’m not especially interested in downstairs,” Jon says carefully. “I don’t think it changes much, honestly, but I’m— I’m glad you told me. That you trusted me enough to tell me, that is. Thank you.”

And then Jon leans forward and kisses him on the nose, right where he had a nasty outbreak a few years ago and had a pore get so badly infected he sometimes has to put concealer on to hide the scar. “Jon, what..?”

Jon blinks, drawing back slightly. “Was that too soon? My apologies.”

“No, I just...” Martin blinks rapidly, trying to process this. “Why?”

“Because I wanted to. I thought it would be nice, and I don’t think I want to try kissing on the lips just yet, and you looked… cute. Or, well, handsome, if you prefer that. Is that okay?”

Martin.exe stops working, he sputters out something incomprehensible, and then finally buries his face in the nearest soft thing to hide his blotchy flushed face. That thing just happens to be Jon’s chest, and he ends up in the most awkward but strangely comfortable hug of his life. They end up leaning against each other for the rest of the ride to Scotland, and when Jon falls asleep, Martin daydreams about a life together with someone who could call him cute and handsome.

* * *

They arrive at the cottage tired and ready to take a nap, maybe together, except there’s a mirror in the hallway. There’s a mirror right there where it has no business being, and it’s distinctly not right.

“Jon?” Martin stares blankly at the mirror, at his now white hair that used to be something like strawberry blonde. “Jon, what...”

“It’s from the Lonely’s influence,” he says softly. “I’m sorry. It’s left its mark on you, and even though you rejected it, it’s going to stay that way.”

“Jon, we match!” Martin starts laughing and can’t stop, because even though it’s not funny, he finally has a mark. Something tangible he can point to and say, ‘Look what I went through!’

Jon keeps holding Martin as he laughs, and holds him even closer when he starts to cry.

* * *

Trauma is skin deep, but that’s exactly as deep as it needs to go. Sometimes Jon thinks if he’d let Nikola peel him, he would have been free of it, free of his scars and marks and identity. It’s such a heavy thing, and he wouldn’t have been the Archivist without his skin. Just another wax mannequin, singing until the world twisted and shifted and lay exhausted from tearing the tiniest hole in the universe, only for it to close.

A train rattles along the tracks nearby, grating against his ears, and without realizing it his right hand has slipped up his sleeve and he rakes his nails across his skin, slowly at first and then more insistently.

“Jon?” Martin reaches across the couch to grab his arm, eyes full of concern. “What are you doing?”

And Jon doesn’t know how to answer that. How does he tell those wide, hazel eyes that he’s somehow started to self harm without knowing it, that he hasn’t broken skin but only by a technicality, that sometimes the scratch marks leave tiny burst blood vessels that last for days?

“Sorry,” he says, drawing back his hands. His skin still itches to feel something, though, and his fingers twitch restlessly.

“It’s okay. I’ve got bad habits too. I’m just concerned for you, okay?”

“Mm.” Slowly and carefully, ever so carefully, Jon reaches out and strokes Martin’s hair. His boyfriend leans into his touch, eyes closed in pleasure and breathing evening out, soft and audible and rhythmic.

They sit like that for a long time, Jon kneading his hands through Martin’s hair, letting himself relish the softness of it. Gentle little caresses, up and down and sometimes stroking against his face. He’s exceptionally careful not to scratch him with his nails, because the one he loves is so very precious to him. Martin heaves a contented sigh, and Jon’s desire to inflict some sort of violence on himself is gone. Because it’s Martin, who’s always stood up for him, who is angry when Jon has been too hurt to feel anger and who is soft when Jon’s sharp edges turn inwards on him.

It’s hard to think about hurting when right here and now, Martin grounds him. Martin is his anchor.

“Can I talk about it?” Jon says finally, withdrawing his hands.

“Of course, dear.” Martin brushes Jon’s retreating fingers between his own, not quite catching them. He offers a smile, and Jon accepts that as a warm piece of encouragement.

“It started after the circus. During my time there, I...I started drifting. Dissociating, I think the word for it is. It made captivity more bearable, but it didn’t stop when I came back. And every time it happened, I started to feel like I was back there. But if I could find some sensation strong enough, I could keep myself grounded. And that sensation was pain, because it was the easiest.”

“Oh, Jon...”

“My nails were kept short, to keep me from damaging my skin. I suppose it’s an ill advised sort of rebellion, really, but it keeps my head from straying back there and reminds me that it's _my_ skin. That I can damage it whenever I please, and no one can stop me.”

“Jon, that’s— ” Martin bites his lip, takes a breath. “I understand why you did it, but let’s find some other ways, okay?”

A small, tentative grin starts to form. “Well, my boyfriend has such warm, lovely hands. I think I’d like to hold them, and feel safe when I’m drifting away.”

“You can hold my hand whenever you want,” he replies with a soft smile.

“Well, I’m greedy, and want to hold them both,” Jon says, impulsively leaning forward and doing just that. Martin gives him a little kiss on the nose, a smile that makes his heart melt, and Jon thinks he could get used to living like this.

**Author's Note:**

> I wrote this while listening to Body by Mother Mother on repeat and I think it shows


End file.
